decorous
adjective
Simple meaning
Showing behaviour, manners, etc., regarded as proper, tasteful, and in accordance with accepted standards.
Pronunciation
Say it like this:
dehkeruhsSay the bold part a little louder.
IPA pronunciation (US)
ˈdɛkɚəs
This word is pronounced essentially the same in American and British English, so one transcription covers both.
IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet) is a standard way of writing speech sounds.
Definition
Everyday modern meanings first, grouped by part of speech.
adjective
Marked by behaviour, manners, etc., regarded as proper, tasteful, and in accordance with accepted standards; becoming, seemly.
Word at a Glance
- Difficulty
- C2 · Proficient (estimated)
- Typical Use
- Rare
Word Aura™
How this word commonly comes across.
Aura for this meaning
This meaning: Marked by behaviour, manners, etc., regarded as proper, tasteful, and in accordance with accepted standards; becoming, seemly.
Used this way, decorous is a reasonably familiar word that usually carries little praise or criticism of its own. It usually sounds natural in a wide range of settings.
- Emotional tone
- Neutral
- Formality
- Neutral
- Intensity
- Not strongly marked
- How common
- Moderately common
- Connotation
- No strong connotation
- Usage feel
- Neutral and straightforward
Word Aura describes common impressions, not a measurement. Tone changes with sentence, speaker, relationship and situation.
More ways to use decorous
- “The tete-a-tete was decorous in the extreme.”adjective
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Common Patterns and Combinations
How this word naturally appears with others.
Word Family
Related forms, grouped by how they connect.
Word family
Words built from the same root.
Something used to beautify.
More about this wordSynonyms, forms, origin
Synonyms
Antonyms
Sense: marked by behaviour or manners or etc
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Dictionary data from Wiktionary via the Free Dictionary API. Simple meanings, combinations and word intelligence are built from verified reference data, no AI is used to load this page.